The movie Natalie Portman called “one of the greatest films ever”
When Natalie Portman was just 12, she starred in Luc Besson’s Léon: The Professional, playing the orphaned Mathilda, who is taken under the wing of her hitman neighbour. The film launched Portman’s career, and just five years later, she landed the role of Padme in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
Since then, Portman has become one of Hollywood’s biggest and most bankable stars, starring in several Star Wars and Marvel franchise movies and highly acclaimed movies like Closer, Jackie, Black Swan and V For Vendetta.
Portman, who has earned three Academy Award nominations and won one, has proved her diversity by playing an incredible range of characters, spanning genres such as romantic comedy, horror, science-fiction and drama. In 2023, she gave a fantastic performance alongside Julianne Moore in Todd Haynes’ May December, which examines the relationship between a woman, Gracie, and her husband, Joe Yoo, whom she began dating when he was 13 and she was 36.
Evidently, Portman is not opposed to starring in a film with controversial subject matter. She plays an actor who must study Gracie, played by Moore, in preparation for a film adaptation of her story, making for an interesting meta-narrative. Portman has been a huge fan of both Haynes and Moore for years, no doubt finding herself over the moon to collaborate with both.
Speaking to A.frame, Portman once picked out Haynes’ Safe, starring Moore as a healthy woman who develops a mysterious illness, as one of her favourite movies. The film, released in 1995, is a terrific watch that Haynes has described as “the hardest, the most difficult film I’ve made for audiences.”
For Portman, Safe is “one of the greatest films ever,” describing Moore’s portrayal of Carol White as “one of the greatest performances ever — that has so much to do with a woman’s role in society, and also with environmental catastrophe, and the relationship between the two.”
She also revealed that when she worked on Garden State, directed by Zach Braff, he asked her to watch the film in preparation for her role. She explained: “It’s just great. Zach Braff showed it to me as an inspiration for Garden State, which is not obvious. I was like 21, and he gave me some reference films and that was one of them, shockingly.”
Safe earned Haynes and Moore nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards, helping to bolster both of their careers. Since then, the director-actor pair have collaborated on Far From Heaven, I’m Not There, Wonderstruck and May December.
